Court protects benefits for Camden hospital worker fired for absences

A hospital technician from a Camden hospital dismissed for excessive absenteeism should not have been disqualified from collecting state unemployment benefits for six weeks because all of her absences were justified by family emergencies, a state appeals court ruled today.

One of the absences, the judges reasoned, occurred the day after the technician's 4-year-old niece was dropped off at her home by the child's mother, who is homeless.

Tracey D. Parks, who represented herself in appealing the six-week unemployment disqualification, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Parks was a critical care technician for the Cooper Health System in Camden when she was fired for missing four days of work during 2007. She had been been given a written notice after her third absence that she would be dismissed if she missed work again.

But Parks called her supervisor before reporting for her shift on Dec. 12 to say she would be unable to come to work because "her 4-year-old niece had been dropped off at her doorstep the night before because the child's mother 'was homeless and couldn't take care of her,'" according to today's appellate ruling. She told the supervisor no one else was available to care for the child.

Parks' three earlier absences, the appeals judges noted, occurred when either she or her asthmatic son was sick.

"All of appellant's absences were occasioned by family emergencies, the first three by her own illness and the illness of her son and the last one by her being unexpectedly placed in the position of having to care for her homeless four-year-old niece,'" the appeals court ruled in concluding Parks' absences did not constitute employee misconduct, which requires a six-week disqualification from collecting unemployment benefits.

Neither Cooper nor the state Attorney General's Office, which represented the unemployment Board of Review in the state Department of Labor, immediately returned calls for comment.

Last year, New Jersey enacted a law entitling employees to take up to six weeks of paid family leave to care for a newborn or newly adopted child, or a sick parent, spouse or child. Payroll deductions to finance the leave program began in January, though employees cannot start taking leave until July.